Last weekend, YouTube made certain changes to the automatic content detection and management software that scans uploaded video for copyrighted material. As a result, a huge number of videos posted by gamers belonging to Multi-Channel Networks (MCN) are now being yanked offline thanks to bogus copyright claims and poor auto-detection. The email that initially went out included the following:

“Beginning in early January, newly-uploaded videos will occasionally go through a process called monetization review. This review is performed by YouTube, and will determine if your content is in compliance with YouTube’s current terms of use and copyright standards.”

The problem with YouTube’s new system is that it’s apparently flagging huge amounts of previously approved content and imposing no penalties on claimants who are filing bad faith disputes on content they don’t own. YouTube’s monetization system allows a user to choose to run ads in front of their content and earn money from the views. If, however, a rightsholder files a claim against the video, YouTube will automatically disable ad revenue on a video. Even if you dispute it, the claimant gets a month to respond. During that month, you make no money.

Dispute too often, or lose disputes, and your account gets deleted. It’s a ridiculous policy, clearly user-unfriendly, and this latest set of claims has only further demonstrated how YouTube — a company literally built on sharing video — has become deeply hostile to its own constituency. The situation is bad enough that Blizzard and Deep Silver (makes of Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light) are issuing statements that explicitly grant players the right to stream their products after other companies are making false claims against user uploaded content.

Part of the problem is the byzantine nature of the copyright system itself. BioShock Infinite, for example, contains a sequence from Mozart’s Requiem — Lacrimosa. Presumably, Irrational Games paid for the copyright on whatever performance of the piece is used in the game. But if a different choir claims copyright of the song on YouTube, they can shut down the video stream, even if the version of the song used in-game isn’t performed by the claimant taking advantage of the ContentID system.

So badly out of step, it hurts

All of this is happening even as Sony and Microsoft double down on video sharing as a major feature of their next-generation consoles. This is only going to drive a substantial segment of the population away. To date, the advantage of being able to possibly monetize content on Youtube — and its enormous reach in comparison to other services — has made users more willing to suffer through the problems. With the Xbox One and PS4 driving streaming to services like Twitch.tv, that’s going to be less an issue in the future.

But reading comments on websites, I’m struck by the number of people who acknowledge ContentID abuses and have turned them off on YouTube altogether. Why upload videos when someone else from an unrelated company can file a claim and wreck your business? Why bother attempting to create something when disputing the claims can lead to your entire channel being deleted? YouTube’s system is deeply hostile to the end user — even NASA has had its video streams blocked by people with the arrogance to claim copyright over footage of Curiosity deploying on Mars.

Instead of solving the problems, YouTube’s solution is to up the ante, driving users farther away.

Tagged In

They would rather pay large ad firms to put up expensive advertising and phony viral marketing to build hype rather than have YouTubers that are getting paid fractions of a penny per view (by someone else) building hype for free.

Great business model being that gaming is largely supported by core gamers that actually pay the big bucks for games. The same core gamers that distrust traditional adverting and look at the gaming community, blogs, forums, website, and game videos to help them decide if its worth paying $60 for a game, or wait to buy it used at Gamestop or on Steam sale.

Joel Hruska

Boudou,

For the most part, the game companies arent’ the ones doing this. Nintendo did file some claims early in the year, and game companies sometimes act against leaked footage, but Blizzard and Deep Silver both issued statements saying: “Stream our games.”

Giorgio Jørgensen

yeah also Valve. Lets be frank its the gaming companies who are responsible, actually I find amazing the speed they are rushing in supporting the review at YouTube. Its the system who is broken, anybody can simply flag any video and claim copyright. And in this case the responsible are apparently two indie music companies who are trying to make some advertising. Now two things are going to happen, either the system get fixed or lots of users leave YT. And this will cause in the long run the dead of the famous YT.

Giorgio Jørgensen

*correction

Its NOT the gaming companies who are responsible.

Sorry for the typo.

Joel Detrow

You know there’s an edit function, right?

Giorgio Jørgensen

no I didnt know…thank for telling me.

Yeah I see that now….embarrassing. lol

Giorgio Jørgensen

Its not the gaming company behind this, they actually support the reviewer.

indio

What the hell happened to 4k “original” quality vdeos?

VirtualMark

Youtube has been getting worse and worse in the past few years. For a video streaming site, it really is terrible at streaming video – you can’t even buffer video anymore. There’s tons of videos that can’t be viewed in certain countries, and now this latest contentid crap. It’s not good.

Chris Courtois

Every month they strive to alienate at least 1% of their audience and users which likely points to them trying to phase themselves out of existence in the coming 3 years. Seriously, it’s the only logical explanation I can find. They also just broke ALL stereoscopic video support, rendering my channel and many other’s completely useless. We might not be a big share, but if they keep alienating small shares of users on a periodic basis like this, they’ll eventually add up and we’ll all have been alienated.

Phobos

Ever sense google got a hold of them it became garbage for the most part.

http://www.dailymotion.com/MMOGaming CelebrityGamer

come to dailymotion please. Its a better site

Techngro

Actually, there’s an extension called Youtube Center that lets you turn on full-video buffering (i.e. you can fully buffer the video, not just a section), as well as other very useful functions. I found it on Lifehacker, check it out, it’s great.

VirtualMark

Ah thanks. I use Youtube Downloader when I’m on a slow connection, it lets you download the video as an mp4 file.

Sipho Mfungi

yeah the buffering issue was a real let down.is there a reason for it or it’s just to irritate users?

VirtualMark

I imagine it’s there to save bandwidth, but it annoys the hell out of me! Sometimes I want to skip a video back, it then reloads the whole thing or freezes. Very annoying.

Winston Smith

That’s actually your own ISP doing that, throttling, not Youtube.

VirtualMark

I don’t have any throttling on my connection – Youtube changed the way their videos buffer a while back.

NicolaMantovani

Let’s wait and see how google fanboys will spin this.

Chris Courtois

Would Google Fanboy just be another synonym for Sado Masochist? :)
“Please sir, hit me again sir” LOL

eonvee375

do they even exist?

eonvee375

do they even exist?

Harry_Wild

Huffington Post new policy now makes a person wanting to post must have a Facebook account before they can post! Many members are chartered poster but still need a Facebook account to do any posting. It suppose to keep civility, etc… LOL! It a good way to eliminate goodwill from their members – fast!

Joel Hruska

I think you may have posted in the wrong story. This isn’t about the Huffington Post.

Barry Ferguson

It was still relevant to the conversation. He’s saying, in so many words, that HuffPo did something similar and people got upset.

Danya J. Okey

NOOO!!! what is going to happen to Markiplier or RadBrad?! Or Ghostrobo! YouTube you freaking suck!

Texas

They’ll have to stop sitting on their asses and get real jobs

Danya J. Okey

true haha

Texas

They’ll have to stop sitting on their asses and get real jobs

Dozerman

Even though the closest to Java that I’ve ever written any substantially large code in was C++, I wonder if I could change the source code of good ‘ole Frostwire to make it more like TOR, but with direct viewing of video and a bittorrent-like distribution system, as opposed to a set of central servers, a sort of youtube app that could also be accessed though browsers. I could advertise it as a freenet; something like what people have been wanting with meshnets, but relying on existing infrastructure. I just don’t know anything about encryption.

Anyone interested in opening up a github project?

ephemeris

Company ‘c’ has probably got the inside scoop,on how much money can
be made by utilizing x bandwidth. There is a court case as to whether
software can be patented. For these folks ‘time is money’. So the only
was to have more of it is to take more of yours,and utilize more of
theirs. They realize they dont build the network that provides the
bandwidth,but they can make cushy deals with x unions to persuade them
that all they have to do is deprive you of more of yours.

They have a hole lot of sas talk about how users should be pacifists to
creation of content. Thing about the bit is that the next standards
effect need to be the ‘publics’ ownership. Rather than this organization
of predatory liability feedback. I dont like liabilities there should
be none in use of given tools to create,and perform them.

Macromedia lies about the fact that their protection schemes are for
‘quality’,they are not. We see quality,but in fact it is the security of
their product. While the bankers rob money off of with technical
deprivation DMCA creates.

When in fact you can pay 3 grand for that 4k
monitor,but it doesn’t mean squat without a 3$ codec,and in and for the
most of the software,layout,and distribution of it. Same as the
situation with Blue-Ray etc. Thats a 3$ codec we pay 100$ for,and to a
device that makes us useless. Same as WTF youtube. Lets just make the
medium for our self expression useless via copyright. Because if it aint
copyrighted and we don’t make proprietary expresion, there simply isn’t
any WTF qaulity in any of it.

Copyright wants to hit the road,so we can jack for them. Bfff. And yeah I should keep comments to myself. And T or F CBS is part owner of YouTube. And T or F the in the constitution it sais in order for form a better union you must be a WTF copyright holder.

TheLastAngel

I guess Google is having a hard time storing TBs upon TBs of redundant videos of game footage and some guy babbling random nonsense over it.
They should just come out and ban such useless content outright or limit it to SD.

iron_dinges

If storage was an issue, they would charge for it, or enforce limits. With google drive, for example, you have a storage limit. The difference is that google drive doesn’t generate nearly as much ad revenue as youtube.

Nick Vander Veen

Please support this petition. This policy could seriously ruin YouTube and effect a vast majority of videos and channels. I strongly encourage you to join the fight to end this policy. Every signature helps. Thanks for your time.

The best way we can protest this is by letting Google know (through a bug report/feedback button) that we will no longer be using Youtube, and then leaving to competitor.

If enough prominent youtube personalities do this (maybe along with disabling their videos for good measure), it should hurt their profits enough that they might consider.

haotian

The thing is that games companies do not own game play footage, they can’t give permission to allow streaming of games, because it’s not theirs. They own the data on the disk, i.e. the actual game, they do not own video footage of someone playing the game. It’s like a guitar company saying “go ahead and use our guitars to make music”. What games companies should be saying is “we cannot file copyright claims against content that we do not own”.

The only way you can have a copyright dispute with a games company is if you are actively copying the game itself, then selling it for people to PLAY it. That’s a massive difference.

iron_dinges

It depends on the EULA – which you must agree to in order to use their software.

To be fair, I consider streaming story-focused games (e.g. The Walking Dead) to be almost on the same level as sharing the game with someone. When you play such a game, you are watching a set of cutscenes that drive a plot. When you watch someone play it, you’re getting that same content.

For non-story driven games like Dota, on the other hand, I agree with you fully.

Joel Hruska

The majority of these claims aren’t coming from game companies. That’s one of the problems with the system. Let me explain:

1). You upload footage that contains a copyrighted song. The game company paid for the copyright. The copyright owner files a dispute and gets to monetize your content or gets it pulled.

2). You upload footage that contains a copyrighted song. Someone who owns the copyright on a different performance of that song disputes your upload, despite having no valid claim. They get to monetize your content unless you dispute, which takes a month and can get you kicked off YouTube. Either way, you lose.

3). You upload a popular video. Someone with no valid claim at all files a dispute. It takes a month to resolve and if you dispute it and lose, you can get kicked off YouTube. Either way, you don’t get any money. Either way, you lose.

The problem here is not game developers filing claims against players. It’s everybody ELSE.

Naipier

“companies do not own game play footage”… I wish I could say you’re spot on here, but sadly, it’s just not the case. As part of EULAs, there is almost always a clause about public displays… that generally tends to say “dont do it”.

http://www.dailymotion.com/MMOGaming CelebrityGamer

Everyone just come to dailymotion please. Its a better site. :)

ubuntupanther

We need a broader copyright reform and we need to support the pirate parties that advocate this reform. Unfortunately Google seems to bow down to the irrational copyright demands of greedy corporations whereas in the not so distant past it refused to bow down so easily…It is hypocritical to blame solely Google on this and not the absurd copyright laws…

Glenn Scott

This is just another shot across the bow by copyright holders trying to prevent Fair Use. If copyright holders had their way, they would not allow anyone to post anything, except themselves, without paying. How better to make sure their opinion gets heard than to prevent others from saying anything?

lookas

Everyone should claim copyright for each video on day one. Immagine million of claims for each video filed from millions of different users. Can it broke the system?

The only people to blame for this are the music industry people, if they didn’t keep bitching for so many years about people stealing their crappy music (or in the current situation, music soundling like the music they stole to begin with) and putting it on youtube this would have never happened. Like the guys who make drm, the music people need to learn when to give up. Yes i think it is bad people are stealing stuff from them, but they need to learn that they will never stop said people, all they are doing is hurting people who are legally using their music while hardly affecting the people they are going after.

Until either they or youtube gets that through their head, i feel youtube is done and another site will take over, heck with a site like youtube going down i think google themselves will be done for, youtube was/is one of google’s last good services still going.

Texas

I’m sick of these youtube gamers spewing all this BS about how they make videos because they love it and that they don’t do it for the money. Looks like the moneys about to stop let’s see how much they love it now

Texas

I’m sick of these youtube gamers spewing all this BS about how they make videos because they love it and that they don’t do it for the money. Looks like the moneys about to stop let’s see how much they love it now

Texas

I’m sick of these youtube gamers spewing all this BS about how they make videos because they love it and that they don’t do it for the money. Looks like the moneys about to stop let’s see how much they love it now

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